I’m a one-customer prostitute — Aisha Yesufu
Many Nigerians know her for human right activism but she has now drawn attention to another side of Aisha Yesufu.
This dimension made some call her “ashewo” or “ashawo” — a derogatory term abusive people are known to direct at women who sell their body for cash.
The term is also slammed on girls who just like boys too much, with the male equivalent of the sexist slur being “woman wrapper”.
“I’m guilty as charged,” Yesufu, a Muslim so devoted she wears hijab to the gym, told BBC Pidgin in a recent interview.
“On my wedding night,” she said, “I told my husband to relax and demand any bedroom fantasy wanted, that I’ll serve it to him hot and fresh. Everything is on the table.”
She said those who call her “prostitute” over her “sexual aluta” are right to do so.
“I’m a prostitute but with one customer,” she said, and that’s her husband to whom she’s committed for life.
“I can delegate every other duty in the house but that one duty is mine alone to serve,” she said.
Yesufu said she doesn’t believe women have to wait for Prince Charming to come sweep them off their feet.
“If you see any man you’d like to marry, go and ‘toast’ him,” she advised single ladies.
She said she was the one who approached her husband, and not the other way round.
She said she tried something similar in secondary school but her crush didn’t just say no but also read her love letter before the entire class.
“He told me I needed to, at my age, focus on my studies.”
Aisha Yesufu hailed from Agbede in Etsako West local government area of Edo State. She was, however, born in Kano. Yesufu became a national icon for her role in demanding freedom for the hundreds of girls Boko Haram, in 2014, kidnapped from Chibok in Borno State. In 2020, Yesufu and other protesters were attacked by security agencies in Abuja where they were demanding comprehensive law enforcement reform and an end to police brutality.
